"Magick" rocks, the dark skin curse, wooden submarines, hogsheads of buried treasure, men becoming gods -- all these were once core doctrines of Mormonism -- but are now nowhere to be seen...

So then the name change makes sense. The mormons of my era believed one way and now this newly christened church believes another way.

It's happened before,the reorganised church of LDS morphed into the Community of Christ in one generation.

anybody Wrote:
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> "Magick" rocks, the dark skin curse, wooden
> submarines, hogsheads of buried treasure, men
> becoming gods -- all these were once core
> doctrines of Mormonism -- but are now nowhere to
> be seen...

Let's go through these;

* "Magick" rocks - church websites and magazines have discussed this. I was amazed to hear that they had. It was never part of the doctrine in my youth, but they"re surprisingly open about it now.

* the dark skin curse - Definitely de-emphasized. However, there was a big thing about the fortieth anniversary of the priesthood ban being lifted last year, and I suspect 2028 will be a big celebration too. The more racist quotes by church leaders have been quietly forgotten, and the BoM rewritten.

* wooden submarines - still in the Book of Mormon, but don't think they were core doctrine in the first place.

* hogsheads of buried treasure - JS' treasure hunting isn't mentioned much, but I guess golden plates counr as such.

* men becoming gods - now here's one qhich has really fallen by the wayside. Now it only survives in the form "be Christlike" or "be like heavenly father". This one is definitely buried, along with Mormon polytheism, in the drive to become mainstream.

Now my list of vanished doctrines:
* Polygamy
* Vengeance for Smith.
* City of Enoch.
* Polynesians as the lineage of Lehi.
* The use of the word "Mormon" (a recent one).
* Throat slitting in the temple.
* Severely disabled people and dead babies having been valiant in the pre-existence.

Polygamy is absolutely still Mormon.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> Polygamy is absolutely still Mormon.

It is not practised in any meaningful comtext within the LDS anymore, although there are references to it in the afterlife.

As a part of fundamentalism and history yes, but otherwise an excommunicable offense.

> It is not practised in any meaningful comtext
> within the LDS anymore, although there are
> references to it in the afterlife.

Really? I didn't know that.


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> As a part of fundamentalism and history yes, but
> otherwise an excommunicable offense.

My appreciation, again, for restating my point in case a sixth grader didn't get it.

* City of Enoch.

It is in Utah.
Animal Control runs a gasoline engine and uses the exhaust to slowly kill dogs and cats and other animals they catch.

Some years back the new Stake Center was built and the StPrez spent $10,000 of the money donated by members to decorate his office. One Bishop called him on it - was released within a week with NO announcement or final talks. NO callings extended after the fact and the new Bishop told "no contact, no callings".

An insular place with corrupt leadership even as it has some nice people living there.

Utah - one sick society.

The dark skin curse is still in their scriptures. The doctrine is found in the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses.

The church makes this claim:

"Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse".
https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng

but as long as it insists that those books are scripture, it is stuck with its doctrine.

2 Nephi 5:21-24
Abraham 1:21-27
Moses 7:8,22

mikemitchell Wrote:
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> The dark skin curse is still in their scriptures.
> The doctrine is found in the Book of Mormon, the
> Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses.
>
> The church makes this claim:
>
> "Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced
> in the past that black skin is a sign of divine
> disfavor or curse".
> https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood
> ?lang=eng
>
> but as long as it insists that those books are
> scripture, it is stuck with its doctrine.
>
> 2 Nephi 5:21-24
> Abraham 1:21-27
> Moses 7:8,22

Also:
Jacob 3:8-
“O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God.”



Alma 3:6-
“And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men.”


3 Nephi 2:15-
“And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites”

In order for the church to disavow the racist teachings, it has to disavow the Book of Mormon. Until it does, the church holds racist teachings. End of story.

They should just come out and say the BoM is a 19th century allegory. The golden plates and first vision, also allegories. In fact, all of the church’s truth claims are allegorical. The saints needed to pretend that blacks were inferior so they could sleep at night. Isn’t being a Mormon all about pretending?

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
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> Isn’t being a
> Mormon all about pretending?

I did address that recently in my thread about whether Mormons are LARPing. I think many do. Not all though, some genuinely believe.

The problem here is known anciently as "the Ship of Theseus".

Theseus has a ship. Over time he gradually repairs that ship. Eventually, every single part of the ahip has been repaired and replaced. Is the fully repaired ship the same as the original ship or not?

It's an interesting paradox. It even applies to us to an extent, since our bodies replace their cells constantly. Are we who we once were?

If the LDS took out all the inconvenient doctrine and everything that made it distinctive, would it still be LDS? The answer would be "yes and no", and we're left with the ship of Theseus paradox. A lot of this has already occurred. Today's church would be barely recognizable to a young farmboy from New England. It would also be very different for a Utahn from 1890.

Jordan Wrote:
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> Theseus has a ship. Over time he gradually repairs
> that ship. Eventually, every single part of the
> ahip has been repaired and replaced. Is the fully
> repaired ship the same as the original ship or
> not?
> (W)ould it still be LDS? The answer would be "yes and no",
> and we're left with the ship of Theseus paradox.

Forgive me for diverting your point, Jordan, but that paradox applies in real life to the USS Constitution, "Old Ironsides," here in the Boston Navy Yard. There is another frigate of the same age (in Virginia, I think) that is just as old, but the Constitution is given the honors of being the oldest ship in the US Navy (still commissioned and manned by Navy sailors) because the keel is original. Almost all of the remainder of both ships have been replaced.

Getting back to the thread, what is the LDS keel, or core? This is where disagreements will occur. For Christians, I believe it can be found in Romans 10:9,10--belief in the Resurrection. Disavow that, and I think you've left Christianity. But what about Latter-day Saints? That JS was a true prophet? Then we get into the mishmash of when he was speaking as a prophet, or as a man. And what if some of his revelations were recorded incorrectly (think: "The Satanic Verses")?

What is the LDS keel or core? Hard to say, but I think the writings of Joseph Smith. That is the LDS aspect more than the general Christian aspects.

Temple worship, exaltation and hierarchy are three other key elements.

The "shipness" of the Constitution comes from its continuity. Whether it is the original ship is philosophical territory.

mormonism can't change until they promote some people who are diverse, such as Brazillians, African, and Hondurians. But that can't happen because of the verses of mormon scripture about the curse cited above by the other posters.

They've painted themselves into a corner, yet they continue to "disavow racism in all it's forms", bla bla bla

It's all talk.

macaRomney Wrote:
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> mormonism can't change until they promote some
> people who are diverse, such as Brazillians,
> African, and Hondurians. But that can't happen
> because of the verses of mormon scripture about
> the curse cited above by the other posters.
>
> They've painted themselves into a corner, yet they
> continue to "disavow racism in all it's forms",
> bla bla bla
>
> It's all talk.

All people are "diverse", but let's not get into that again.

The obvious lack is of women. But there are Europeans, South Americans, Africans etc in there. The GAs are slowly getting more multiracial, but a lot of the hierarchy is tied into families not race.

Mormonism has been changing for over 180 years. Sometimes in small ways, sometime in larger ways. Does it matter? Not until it totally changes from total baloney.

It matters the same way that it matters in the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes" whether everyone is participating in their own gas-lighting by pretending to see things that are not really there.

If the core claims about the divinity of Joseph Smith's calling as a prophet and the genuineness of his "revelations" and of the Book of Mormon, etc. as a genuine ancient record are not true, then everything that has followed from those claims is worse than bogus...it's a multi-generational fraud that has wasted the time, money, minds and even lives of millions of people during the past 150+ years.

The leaders of today are flat-out contradicting the things taught by the leaders of just a few decades ago, who in turn flat-out contradicted the things taught by the leaders who came before them....

And yet all of them have based their claims about having special "authority" and "powers" on the idea that "callings" and "keys" and "priesthood" positions were passed on to them in a chain of "ordinations" and "callings" that trace back in time and in line to Joseph Smith through the same chain of predecessors who over time, for all practical purposes, have been repudiated as teachers of falsehoods by the very successors whose authority claims are based on "authority" given to them by those teachers of falsehoods.(They of course don't refer to their predecessors as "teachers of falsehoods" but that conclusion is inescapable when considering the degree to which the predecessors' express teachings have been reversed and repudiated.) As a result,there is no logical or legitimate basis for any of the authority claims made by and for the current crop of Mormon leaders.

Brigham Young said that Adam is the god whom Mormons worship and pray to. His successors got their putative "authority" from him. But he was, according to all of his successors, a man who obviously taught falsehoods about the most fundamental aspect of their faith. Nothing is more basic than correctly identifying your deity. If Brigham Young got that wrong, everything else is secondary and trivial. There is no legitimate reason to trust a single thing that he ever said about doctrine, about the temple, about the priesthood and about his authority to make callings recognized and sanctioned by god (which god?). And yet the modern leaders seem to think that it's okay to pretend that Brigham's worshiping the wrong god...and, worse, preaching to the members of the church that they should worship the same wrong god...never really mattered.

Of course it matters to anyone interested in knowing the truth. It only does not matter to those who have no particular concern about distinguishing truth from falsehoods.

There's some bible passages to the effect that knowing the truth will set you free. It actually applies to Mormonism and Mormon leaders. Any ordinary members who discover the truth will be free of the false authority of the Mormon leaders. The way to know the truth is to discover the extent to which the leaders, have throughout the relatively short history of Mormonism, have contradicted, reversed and changed so many "eternal truths" that it becomes impossible for a sane, rational person to give their authority claims any credibility at all.

anybody Wrote:
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> "Magick" rocks, the dark skin curse, wooden
> submarines, hogsheads of buried treasure, men
> becoming gods -- all these were once core
> doctrines of Mormonism -- but are now nowhere to
> be seen...

There was a time the Democrats were aggressively anti-Communist and in favor of racial segregation, eugenics, states rights, limited immigration, and lower taxes -- they were core elements of the platform, but are nowhere to be seen... Are they still Democrats?

if you replace a boat once piece at a time, until none of the original pieces remain, is it the same boat?

HWint Wrote:
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>
> if you replace a boat once piece at a time, until
> none of the original pieces remain, is it the same
> boat?

And will it still float?

[Minor note on nomenclature, "ship" vs. "boat:" a boat is a vessel that can be taken aboard a ship.]